Monthly Archives: August 2012

"Please sir, may I have some more?" It’s not just Dickensian orphans who have to fight for the most basic staple - food. Even in the ’advanced’ capitalist countries, the profit system is incapable of providing people with a balanced diet. socialistparty.net looks at the effect of capitalism on food and socialist solutions.

The shocking massacre last on 16 August, of 34 miners at the Lonmin company’s platinum mine in Marikana, exposes in all its brutality the nature of the ‘new’ South Africa dominated politically by the African National Congress (ANC) since the 1994 general election which marked the sweeping away of the barbaric apartheid system.

On the world stage, the case of Julian Assange is about U.S. imperialism’s need to punish WikiLeaks. There is no doubt that the Swedish state and the government would be happy to assist the US. However, the case is also about serious allegations of rape, which must be investigated.

On 1 July, as Hong Kong marks the 15th anniversary since its return to Chinese rule, a massive anti-government demonstration will take place. Last year more than 200,000 took part in what, since 2003, has become an annual event. This shows how strained are relations between the central government in Beijing and the Hong Kong ‘special administrative region’ it regained from Britain in 1997.

Enda Kenny announced last week that the Irish government would use their presidency of the EU Council in the first 6 months of next year to target the prevention of global child hunger. The announcement was made at a conference on the issue called by British Tory Prime Minister David Cameron who will lead the G8 next year.

The suffering people of Syria stand on the brink of a precipice. Each day brings new evidence that a sectarian conflagration of terrible proportions can ensue, unless a force emerges which could hold out a realistic prospect of uniting its 22 million people through offering a new dispensation. This would be one where the wealth and stewardship of the nation would be democratically invested in them rather than be the subject of warring factions led by local elites and sponsored by cynical international interests.

At least 46 workers were shot dead, and many more injured, on 16 August as a massive police and army assault was launched to crush a strike by thousands of workers at platinum miner Lonmin’s shafts in Marikana outside Rustenburg, in addition to at least six mine workers who were killed in clashes earlier on in the strike which began 10 August.